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Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... Hardwood Creek Library (Forest Lake) | FICTION BAL | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... R.H. Stafford Library (Woodbury) | FICTION BAL | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Wildwood Library (Mahtomedi) | FICTION BAL | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
From Center for Fiction First Novel Prize finalist Bethany Ball comes a biting and darkly funny new novel that follows a set of privileged, jaded Connecticut suburbanites whose cozy, seemingly picture-perfect, lives begin to unravel amid shocking turns of fate and revelations of long-held secrets.
Welcome to small-town Connecticut, a place whose inhabitants seem to have it all -- the status, the homes, the money, and the ennui. There's Tripp and Virginia, beloved hosts whom the community idolizes, whose basement hides among other things a secret stash of guns and a drastic plan to survive the end times. There's Gunter and Rachel, recent transplants who left New York City to raise their children, only to feel both imprisoned by the banality of suburbia. And Richard and Margot, community veterans whose extramarital affairs and battles with mental health are disguised by their enviably polished veneers and perfect children. At the center of it all is the Petra School, the most coveted of all the private schools in the state, a supposed utopia of mindfulness and creativity, with a history as murky and suspect as our character's inner worlds.
With deep wit and delicious incisiveness, in The Pessimists, Bethany Ball peels back the veneer of upper-class white suburbia to expose the destructive consequences of unchecked privilege and moral apathy in a world that is rapidly evolving without them. This is a superbly drawn portrait of a community, and its couples, torn apart by unmet desires, duplicity, hypocrisy, and dangerous levels of discontent.
Author Notes
BETHANY BALL was born in Detroit and has lived in Santa Fe, New Jersey, Miami, and Israel. She now lives in New York with her family. She is the author of What to Do About the Solomons.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
An expensive private school in an affluent Connecticut suburb becomes the focal point for three families in Ball's appealing if predictable sophomore effort (after What to Do About the Solomons). City expats Gunter and Rachel meet fellow Petra School parents Tripp and Virginia at a New Year's Eve party thrown at their house, where doomsday prepper Tripp stockpiles guns in the basement. Tripp's best friend, Richard, is there with his wife, Margot, but he's pursuing Virginia, a novelist with no shortage of fawning male fans who appreciate her looks as much as her work. There's also a trickster principal named Agnes, a secret cancer, an accidental near-murder, and an extramarital affair almost happens, and while the threads occasionally captivate, no single plot line prevails, and the many asides fizzle out with almost no consequence. Unfortunately, the narrative's emotional flatness (as well as that of the characters) makes this feel somewhat schematic, and the plot is too intricate for its own good. Despite some moments of charm, this feels like it's missing a sense of purpose. Agent: Duvall Osteen, Aragi, Inc. (Oct.)
Kirkus Review
Ball's mixture of satire and domestic drama turns contemporary suburban life into a frightening dystopia of "material leisure and emotional poverty." The satiric element centers around the Petra School, a private "temple of education" in upscale Somerset, Connecticut. Headmistress Agnes seems warm and charismatic if a bit eccentric at first, but her dictatorial creepiness becomes apparent, both in the increasingly strident school bulletins she sends--linking dairy and dyslexia, warning against (pre-Covid era) vaccinations, banning any mention of Jewish holidays--and as she exerts personal control over both students and parents. Starting on New Year's Eve 2013, Ball follows several of those parents and potential parents as three marriages begin to tailspin into crisis. Current Petra parents Virginia and Tripp are keeping huge secrets from each other: Novelist Virginia has cancer, while financially strapped Tripp has built a survivalist arsenal in the basement. Virginia's old friend Rachel and her Swedish architect husband, Gunter, have recently arrived from Manhattan and enrolled their kids at Petra. Initially Rachel, though Jewish, is so desperate to fit in that she ignores hints of Agnes' antisemitism, but Gunter is dismissive of Petra (and suburbia and America in general). Then Agnes begins to woo him. Margo, a compulsive cleaner and stay-at-home mother of three sons, has never recovered emotionally from the death of an infant daughter. Now a fanatic follower of Agnes' Wednesday evening meditation sessions, Margo wants to switch her boys from public school to Petra despite objections from the kids and her overworked husband, Richard, a devoted father, pothead, and online porn addict. Once readers are drawn into these stories, Ball leaps into a broad rhetorical section, describing from a third-person plural viewpoint all the ways suburban men and women, as well as their children, are miserable. Certainly the kids Ball introduces are unhappy. Virginia and Tripp's daughter is burdened by her parents' secrets. Petra turns Rachel's 6-year-old son into an outcast. Richard and Margo's three sons stand by helplessly watching their parents' mental health deteriorate. Despite Ball's mordant humor, the pain here feels all too real. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Three couples--Virginia and Tripp, Richard and Margot, and Rachel and Gunter--form the nexus of Ball's latest witty novel, following What to Do about the Solomons (2017), a stinging satire about the hollowness of the suburban dream. Each couple is glittering but damaged. Tripp hoards firearms, certain of an apocalyptic future, while Virginia denies herself life-saving cancer treatments. After the death of their baby, Margot swings from debilitating depression to fitful bursts of energetic house cleaning, while Richard copes by toking up at his sons' soccer games. And perhaps the tony Connecticut countryside isn't the best fit for such cosmopolitan urbanites as Swedish expat Gunter and Rachel, a graphic artist working in advertising. What keeps them all in this unsatisfying place is their children's future at the Petra School, a private enclave with a dubious educational philosophy that manages to be both Holy Grail and an archnemesis as each family strives for happiness but falls considerably short. Withering in its barbed wit, Ball's mordantly penetrating portrait of middle-class malaise teems with infidelity, inequity, mistrust, and disappointment.
Library Journal Review
In a posh, pretty Connecticut town, longtime residents Richard and Margot look like the perfect couple but are fragile and faithless underneath, while New Yorker escapees Gunter and Rachel find themselves bored silly and the popular Tripp and Virginia are secret survivalists stockpiling guns in the basement. They are all connected by their association with prestigious Petra School, which serves as backdrop as their lives implode. From the author of What To Do About the Solomons, finalist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize finalist.
